


The Complete Set

by crackleviolet



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 19:54:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9841478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackleviolet/pseuds/crackleviolet
Summary: V and MC are falling for one another. Will there be a happy ending?I wrote the first half of this a while ago and the second, continuing half for the V day of the Mystic Messenger Valentine's day event 2017 on tumblr.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is set after the events of the main game, so it might be a little bit spoilery in regards to some things.

He didn’t deserve her.

Ironic that that should be the only consistent thought he had had in well over a year over therapy. He did not know if he should be happy about it or not, for it made him miserable and yet pleased all at the same time.

He might not know up from down, but he knew he was unworthy of her soft smiles. He did not deserve the chunky scarf she knitted for the RFA secret Santa and arranged around his neck. It smelled of peaches, he considered miserably, and he must have seemed most ungrateful at a gift she made herself.

He couldn’t stand the thought of her fingers working the pattern; of her choosing the wool just for him. He did not deserve such attention. He was unworthy of any such thing.

He never wore the scarf in public. Sometimes, he tried it on in private to see if it still smelled so sweetly of peaches. It always did and he always cast it aside, miserable.

He knew she would not question him on the matter when he saw her. If anything, she would understand and it only made him feel worse.

She brought flasks of soup to his apartment once. She claimed they were leftovers, but the flasks had his name on. He didn’t know how to thank her and in retrospect, he wasn’t sure if he ever did. The pair of them sat at his table with warm bowls of soup and V could not bear to think about her cooking at home; of her considering the foods he liked and even going so far as to bring some of his favourite bread.

He didn’t deserve her sense of humour; her cunning words and kind soul and more than anything he wished she would abandon him to his solitude. The thought made him pleased and yet miserable at the same time.

In the end, she approached him at the gallery; an erroneous move, though she did not know the context. She invited him for coffee, which of course was worse, though she did not know why.

She told him of her feelings over a latte; stammering into the foam that she admired him and would like to spend more time together to get to know him.

And all he could think about was their coffee shop surroundings; the gingerbread man she had bought, the beanie hat she wore that she seemed to have knitted from the same wool as his scarf. She was a wonderful, kind, intelligent woman and once he would have jumped at the chance to get to know her.

But then?

It was too late. Across the room was the table where he had first met Rika, serving as a harsh reminder of a fact he already knew.

“I’m sorry,” he said, rising from the table. “But I don’t feel the same way.”

He didn’t deserve her, he considered as he left the coffee shop.

_I don’t deserve you. I don’t want you. I don’t need you._

Even so, when she began to sob into her coffee, it took everything he had not to run to her.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The card was beautiful, with red ribbons and pressed flowers decorating the front. It sat on her doorstep as she left for work in an ivory box with a matching red ribbon, and the only clue that it belonged to her at all was the typewritten label bearing nothing but her name.

She had been on her way to work and did not have the time to go back, so as it was she put the box in her bag and gave it a second, third and fourth glance as she took the subway.

As she greeted her work colleagues, she was curious. By the time she got to her cubicle she could hardly wait. She did not even bother to turn on her computer and instead untied the red ribbon on the box, heart racing at the card within.

A message was printed on the inside in similarly intricate typeface:

_Roses are red_

_Violets are blue_

_Somebody loves you_

_I wonder who?_

She knew who she wanted it to be. In truth, her heart sank at the memory of being so publicly rejected. Even so, she was curious of the instructions underneath the poem. They referenced going to the goldfish bread stand outside of her work building at ten o'clock that morning, when the next stage of the Valentine would become clear.

It was probably a prank. She laughed about it even as she began her work for that morning. Someone was bound to be there with a camera, ready to point and laugh and stare as she collapsed into tears, just as she had before.

By 9, however, she had placed the card beside her computer monitor and by 9:45, she found herself eyeing the clock. If she never went, she reasoned, then she would never have answers.

And so she arrived at the goldfish bread stand at 9:58, with the card in her hands, unsure exactly what to say.

“I, uh,” she said as reached the front of the line, “I got this card, and-”

One look at the card and the vendor looked immediately enlightened.

“You!” He exclaimed. “I’ve been waiting for you!”

“You have?”

She was sure she had never met the man before, yet he seemed to have been expecting her. All of a sudden, she wondered if he was the one who sent the card.

“This was left for you,” he said, leaning under the counter for something. “He said I should give it to you if you came by.”

“He?”

It was a box. Exactly identical to the one from that morning.

“Thank you,” she said, ignoring the disappointed expression of the vendor as she rushed back to her cubicle. Presumably he had been curious of its contents or at least thought that she might buy something.

Inside of the second box was a card with a blue ribbon, equally as pretty as the first. She did not bother to be discreet this time around, staying on her feet as she cast aside the box.

As before, there was a poem inside of the card.

_Roses are red_

_Violets are blue_

_Sugar is sweet_

_So is this clue_

The “clue” was a business card from an ice cream parlor two blocks over. When she turned the card over, she realised that the sender had written down a time. She could barely decipher the handwriting, but she was scheduled to be on lunch at that time anyway.

She had actually never been to that particular ice cream place before, though she had heard Yoosung talk about it before on the messenger. They had a generous student discount and big portions and for a brief moment she wondered if maybe he was the one that had sent her the Valentine.

The moment she stepped through the door to the ice cream place with the card in her hand, the serving staff all gave one another the same expression as the vendor at the food cart. They, too, had been expecting her and she was more than a little bit apprehensive as she approached the cash registers.

They did not give her a box, however, but an overly large bowl of ice cream.

“I,” she said, glancing from the ice cream to the serving staff, all of whom seemed as perplexed by the situation as she was. “Thank you.”

As she took her seat, she glanced around the place for cameras, suddenly suspicious again that the entire thing was a prank. Why come to such a sudden stop just as the game had started going?

She prodded at the ice cream, wondering what she was missing and coming to the steady conclusion that perhaps that was the story of her love life; she had spent weeks wondering the same thing after V’s dismissal. If she was honest, she had hoped he was the sender.

She sat there for so long that the ice cream melted into a soupy mess at the bottom of the bowl and she stirred it halfheartedly, with the intention of leaving shortly afterwards. As she shifted it, however, she noticed that there were words printed on the bottom of her bowl. An address that she realised she recognized only too well.

She had been acting so strangely that morning that it did not take much to convince her colleagues that she needed the afternoon off. She knew that she was going to need the time.

* * *

Rika’s apartment still lay unoccupied. There was no longer a bomb, but in the months following that first RFA party, no one had returned. For a moment, she wondered if the password would even be the same and then wondered if to grateful when it was.

Despite everything, the apartment’s interior was exactly the same as when she had stayed there that previous year and she dropped her purse on the couch by force of habit, turning on her heel to try and find the next clue.

The next box had a purple ribbon and someone had positioned it on Rika’s desk. She was more hesitant about this one, pulling the ribbon cautiously and only considering at that point the possibility that it could be a trap.

Inside of the box was a third card with a matching purple ribbon.

_Roses are red_

_Violets are blue_

_I’ll tell you my story_

_If you figure this clue_

Attached to the note was a key. Too small for a doorway, but small enough for any of the cabinets in Rika’s desk.

She knew that they had been cleared of confidential information for quite some time and yet still she hesitated before leaning down to try and match the key to any of the locks. When she realised it fit the biggest of the drawers, she took a deep breath and turned the key in the lock with such a loud creak that she was sure the universe knew she was up to no good.

Inside of the drawer was a package wrapped in ivory paper and tied with a purple ribbon. She closed the drawer, suddenly nervous, but curiosity got the better of her and she snatched it back out.

It was a photo album; leather backed and gilded lettering on the spine.

She sank down onto Rika’s couch before opening the front cover, smiling softly at the early photographs of the RFA. Photographs from Rika’s parties, pictures of her friends in a way she had never known them and never would, pictures of Rika and V laughing together with seemingly endless bottles of wine.

Everyone seemed so happy in those pictures and she wondered why the sender had wanted her to see them. Rika and V matched one another so perfectly, like the sunlight’s reflection across a clear ocean. She suddenly wished she had never seen it.

She skimmed forward a few pages, to the later parties, to the shadowy period when Rika finally disappeared and V fell into shadow on the occasions he was in the pictures at all. The photographs where nobody smiled and most of the photographs were a formality.

And then there was her photograph, at her first RFA party. Only in that moment did she realise how out of place her smile actually was. She had not believed them when they said she changed everything, but now she could see the way the dark cloud of Rika’s absence all but evaporated with her. After her first party, everyone smiled again. V smiled again. It was weak, but it was there.

She had never noticed the way he looked at her before. The small glances caught on camera as she made jokes. The way he gently linked his arm around her in her first official RFA group shot-

No

She had noticed before. She had taken soup to his apartment for fear he was not eating properly. She’d knitted him a scarf for the(rigged) RFA secret Santa. He was the one to insist she had it all wrong and she had respected it, even if it left her deeply miserable.

At the back of the album was one last envelope, adorned with a white ribbon and she opened it slowly, wondering what on earth she might find.

It was a single piece of paper, typewritten, dated three days after her confession. Her blood ran cold when she realised that it was a page of a journal.

**_“I told her I didn’t care for her. I lied. I was a ghost when she met me. For a long time I lived and breathed but I was a dead man walking. I look at her, though, and I’m alive and looking forward to every day that I am able to spend with her._ **

**_And I cannot help but feel it is a luxury I don’t deserve; as if I’ve stolen the North Star and am merely clinging onto it.”_ **

* * *

On the back of the note were plans to meet at a coffee shop in the financial district at six that evening. He had not known that she would skip work, of course, but it was a cozy place and it gave her time to change out of her work clothes and into something less formal.

She did not know what she would say to him. She wondered what he meant to say to her. As it was, her mind was a scrambled mess right up until she saw him standing outside, a cardboard cup in his hand.

He had his back to her and her first instinct was to hide. Her second was to run to him and in the end she went with her third, which was to approach slowly and call him by his name.

“You followed the clues,” he said, “good. I-”

“Wait,” she said. “Wait, don’t say a word.”

She wanted to ask him so many things, but in the end, settled on the simplest question.

“What you said…in your journal…was it true?”

“I meant it,” he said.

“I know that you wrote it a long time ago,” she said. “I don’t know if you feel that way now…but I just want to say…you didn’t steal anything.”

She sighed. Words were difficult.

“Any happiness you felt while you were with me, you found it on your own,” she said. “I was just there to guide you.”

She had told him not to speak but at that moment, she wished he would. He reached into the pocket of his coat and lifted out one final box, wrapped in a white ribbon.

“For you,” he said and passed it to her. She glanced from the box to him and slowly pulled back the ribbon.

Inside of the box was a pair of gloves, hand knitted and badly.

“I um…I watched a few tutorials on the internet,” said V, suddenly looking sheepish. “They match the scarf you made for me. In theory anyway.”

“You know,” she said, “if you wanted to learn, I could have taught you.”

“I like surprises.”

“So I’ve noticed.”

“We have a problem, though,” she said, slipping on the gloves and wiggling her fingers against the wool. “If only you have the scarf and only I the gloves, neither of us has the complete set.”

He laughed out loud at that and slipped a hand into hers.

“That is a predicament,” he said. “I suppose… _we’ll_ have to be the complete set, won’t we?”

She took in the sight of their joined hands, knowing it ought to have felt strange. She had thought about such a thing for almost as long as she had known V and had expected the sensation of his hand in hers to send her head spinning. It didn’t, however. It felt normal; as if they were meant to hold one another’s hand at one point or another.

“I don’t believe in soulmates,” she said, looking up into his eyes. “But I think we always were.”

 


End file.
